Resilience isn’t built at work: How pre-shift “warm-ups” can help veterinary professionals thrive

In this episode of The Resilient Vet: Mind and Body Strategies for Success, hosts Aaron Shaw, OTR/L, CHT, CSCS, and Jennifer Edwards, DVM, ACC, CPC, ELI-MP, discuss how physical and emotional preparation before shifts can help veterinary professionals become more resilient in their careers. They explain that resilience is not a "switch" one flips nor a product that can be bought. Rather, it is a skill set developed through intentional physical and emotional "warm-ups" before a shift even begins.

They also explore the concept of the ‘veterinary athlete’: the idea that surviving the physical and emotional demands of a long shift requires the same kind of intentional warm-up and training an athlete brings to game day. To help veterinary professionals build this resilience, Shaw and Edwards share tips and exercises that veterinary professionals can use to strengthen their mental and physical resilience in their roles.

Partial transcript:

Shaw: If your day sometimes feels like you’ve been run over before lunch, this episode is for you, because resilience does not start at the clinic. It starts with how you prep your body, how you prep your emotions and your brain, long before that shift even begins. We know that's the case for our clinical skills; we take years learning, years preparing, practicing, and it's the same for skills to build our physical and emotional resilience for a career in vet medicine. Today, we're going to give you a pre-shift physical and emotional warm-up to boost your resilience.

My name is Aaron Shaw. I am an occupational therapist, coach for [veterinarians] and vet teams, and founder of Project VetSpan and the VetSpan Collective community. I am also married to a veterinarian—lucky me—so I can speak firsthand to seeing the experiences of what it takes to survive and thrive in the demanding vet profession. And thankfully for me as well, I also have a co-host.

Edwards: Hi, I am Dr Jennifer Edwards, and I am a veterinarian, a former practice owner, and I am now a leadership and energy coach and speaker. And as Aaron mentioned, you can tell I, too, understand firsthand the demands and the toll that this profession can take—and does take—on ourselves from an emotional standpoint, physical standpoint, pretty much from every standpoint. So I now help people with conscious leadership, and I work with veterinarians and veterinary professionals and leaders to help them uncover the patterns that are driving your life and driving the things that are holding you back so that you can create an amazing life and career that really feels aligned and fulfills you.

So, I'm curious: have you or someone on your team ever experienced that your day starts out and all of a sudden it just goes sideways? Things just don't go well at all, and it's because you were not properly prepared?